A typical disk drive is a commercially available hard disk drive of any capacity and transfer rate that fit in a 3½ inch form factor. It is a common practice to utilize multiple hard disk drives in a storage system to attain high storage capacities. Current designs of storage systems have either packaged individual disk drives or mounted disk drives in an array or drawer. Packaging is generally understood to provide mechanical mounting and electrical interconnection for the disk drives. Packaging may also provide physical protection and a control function for each drive.
The prior art packaging techniques have failed to achieve a very high density of disk drive packaging technique that is both cost-effective and easily serviceable by a technician. The typical prior art techniques are too bulky to be considered for many applications. The typical prior art techniques are also difficult to service, causing excessive down time for the storage system during required servicing times, such as when a disk drive fails. The excessive down time degrades the usefulness of the storage system to the operator and may cause a great inconvenience to operators who desire to access the disk data in the storage system.